There are six relationship principles that drive the Getting to We mindset, both in negotiating the relationship and in the subsequent operation of the partnership. These guiding principles tell the parties how to act within the relationship. In earlier posts, I’ve talked about the importance of trust and the necessary steps needed to build and […]
From the Blog
The Price is Not Just About Paying the Rent
It’s often said that everyone has a price, and when it comes to transaction-based deals, of course, price is all-important. I thought about this as I listened to another track from the Pet Shop Boys—Rent—while airborne recently. Last time in this space, in More to Partnership than Making Money, I riffed on another of their […]
Developing a Shared Vision and Guiding Principles
Getting to We is a process. After partners assess the levels of trust and compatibility between them and agree that there is enough trust and compatibility, they are ready to move on to the next step in the process: developing a shared vision for the relationship. It is vital that the parties view each other […]
Assessing Trust and Compatibility in a Business Relationship
Accurately assessing trust and compatibility is not easy. It’s often one-sided: a buying company will evaluate a supplier’s trustworthiness without understanding the supplier’s perceptions of its own trustworthiness. That’s why professors Gerald Ledlow and Karl Manrodt developed the Compatibility and Trust AssessmentTM (CaT) to measure the strength of a business relationship across five dimensions, with […]
More to Partnership than Making Money
If you remember rocking out to the Pet Shop Boys you probably reached musical maturity during the 1980s. Ah yes, the 1980s: a time of economic struggle, redistribution of wealth, corporate greed, conspicuous consumption and the rise of yuppies. Sort of like today! One of the UK duo’s big hits, “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of […]
Getting to We: It’s All About Trust, Transparency and Compatibility
Getting to We is a book about negotiating. It is not, however, a typical negotiation book when compared to the hundreds of other negotiation books out there. It’s a book that opens the way to developing a new mindset and process for negotiating business relationships where the success of the relationship matters most. And that […]
GENCO Joins the Ranks of Vested Award-Winning Companies
If necessity is the mother of invention, transformation may well be the big daddy of re-invention. That’s perhaps what Dell and GENCO thought as they held a Global Outlet Partnership Summit in Fort Worth, TX in 2011. The purpose of the summit was to restructure and align their outsourcing agreement to move from a traditional […]
The 5 Steps of Getting to We
Getting to We is a new approach and mindset for agreement negotiations that leaves the typical “I win, you lose” strategy in the dust. That strategy simply no longer works for the long-term. And it never worked very well for the short-term, either. But if you buy into The Getting to We premise—that highly collaborative […]
I’m Finished with Final
I’m giggling a little as I write this. I just signed off on one of the latest articles my team and I are writing. Its title now files under “When you Build Fatal Flaws into a Contract, Don’t Be Surprised If Your Contract is Fatally Flawed FINALv4.doc.” It’s the “FINALv4” part that I find funny. […]
Thinking Through the Negotiation Game
In last week’s Halloween post I wrote about the negotiation I had with my son about his costume. It made me think about some of the downright scary negotiation tactics companies use to help them get a better deal. I did a little researching and ran across Chester L. Karrass’ website, which has a negotiations […]
